We were happy to ye
t again join one of the fantastic events hosted by the STEAM Factory. STEAM Exchange is a monthly themed interdisciplinary seminars. Every month, three faculty or staff from different disciplines are asked to present on how a particular topic relates to their individual disciplines and body of work. On February, the topic was bubbles.
Attendees heard about food insecurity and food deserts (or bubbles) from Dr. Mike Hogan, Associate Professor at the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Then Dr. Caitlin McGurk, from the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, showed speech bubbles on some fabulous cartoons at the current exhibit Ladies First: A Century of Women’s Innovations in Comics and Cartoon Art.
Of course, a gathering about bubbles would not be complete without blowing some soap bubbles. So BAMM closed the evening talking about the Steiner or Motorway Problem and minimal surfaces, showing the fantastic forms soap film takes when adhering to different frames. We pointed out how the field of Minimal Surfaces was born from Plateu’s interest in studying soap film.
As it is always the case at STEAM Factory’s events, we had a lovely evening sharing the mathematical views on the topic and contrasting them with view’s in other fields.